Since 25th May 2018, organisations handling the personal data of people in the EU have had to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Following Brexit, the UK has its own equivalent — UK GDPR, alongside the Data Protection Act 2018 — so UK churches need to comply too. And if you’re based elsewhere, the principles are simply good practice, so it’s worth reading on.
This is a positive thing: it means personal data has to be handled responsibly and with permission. Your church website, through the Church Admin plugin, holds a lot of personal data — names, addresses, emails, phone and mobile numbers, details of children — and it can contact people by email and SMS. That brings responsibilities.
This page is practical guidance on how Church Admin helps you comply — it isn’t legal advice. Your church is responsible for its own data protection, so if in doubt, check with your data protection officer or denomination.
Your responsibilities in brief
- Have a clear privacy policy. WordPress includes a starter privacy policy template you can build from under Settings → Privacy.
- Keep a record of how each person gave their permission to be contacted.
- Keep data only as long as it’s operationally needed — delete people’s data when they leave.
- Think about the other personal data you hold on paper and online — giving records, Gift Aid forms and the like — and how securely it’s stored.
How Church Admin helps you comply
The plugin has a number of features built specifically to support data protection:
- Household data report PDF — a report of exactly what data is stored for a household, so you can respond quickly if someone makes a Subject Access Request (which they’re entitled to do).
- Communication preferences on the registration screen — people give explicit permission for each channel: email, SMS, phone and post.
- Printable household consent form — a PDF for each household explaining what data is held and confirming permissions, with space for everyone aged 16 and over to sign. A good approach is to get every household to complete one and then file it, so you’re covered.
- Login required for personal data — any shortcode or block that could display personal data requires the visitor to be logged in. (If you’re outside the EU/UK and really want to, you can override this with
loggedin=FALSE, but it’s not recommended.) - Self-service deletion in the app — the Our Church app can give members a way to delete their own account and data, helping you honour deletion requests.
What you need to do
- Install an SSL certificate so your site runs over
https://. This encrypts data between your visitors and your site. Most hosts now provide SSL free. - Keep personal data behind a login. Make sure any Church Admin shortcode that reveals personal data — chiefly the address list — only appears on pages that require login. The easiest way is to give people user accounts using the Create User Accounts button on the People tab.